Our Genealogical Helper for Ossia ...

That it also helps us to understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.

By learning about Ossia (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us insight while doing our genealogical research.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this, our Genealogical Helper for Ossia. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

It's still very early in our research, but as we gather more information it will be added to this page.

Newspapers Published in Ossia ...

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 19 newspapers that have been published in the area around Ossia.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Ossia, there are papers which were published within 18 miles [29 km]<1>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Ossia.

Cemeteries Near Ossia ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Ossia.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you click on the [Map] that follows each cemetery's name, a new browser window will open with a Google map showing a satellite view of the area where the cemetery is located. We have tried to place the cemetery in the center of the map, but we're still working on our data and the map might not not be centered properly. If you don't see the cemetery right away, try zooming-in. Usually, but not always, you can see the outline of the cemetery and some of the headstones.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Ossia covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<2>

While we didn't find Ossia in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Ossia.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Ossia, with the one closest to Ossia listed first.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived: their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the east contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch, the UsGenWeb Project or Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to all and free to view - although they might link to other websites which do charge.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Ossia:

The GenDisasters website specializes in newspaper articles about tragedies and disasters. While it makes interesting reading all by itself, it should be of special interest to genealogists and family historians looking for people who were either affected by or directly involved in such tragedies.

Off-the-Road Links ...

Footnotes ...

<1>

Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance from Ossia. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Ossia) to Point B.

Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Ossia. The point that we are using is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 38.5890, Longitude: -81.0268 [Map]. In this case, the coordinates for Ossia have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Ossia, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.